Savaran track ‘Hidden Places’ on Burning Palms compilation at Flaming Pines Label

My thanks to Kate Carr for the opportunity to take part in the creation of this compilation. I’ll let Kate describe the background to the project in her own words……..

This is a compilation about a small beach in Sydney , Australia called Burning Palms.  Accessible only on foot, It is the home of black cockatoos, many palm trees and a natural figure eight rock pool. Most contributers haven’t been there. For them this compilation has been a process of imagination and fantasy, for others it has been one of nostalgia, remembering and forgetting.

This compilation is about the process of imbuing a place with meaning, a common theme in ambient music. But rather than aiming to uncover some inner essence of the landscape this compilation looks at how this act can be just as much a work of fiction as one of fact.

Tracks by: Broken Chip, Savaran, Kate Carr, Sublamp, All N4tural, Manrico Montero, Adam WIlliams, Darren McClure, Every Bolt Rumbling.  Mastering: 12k

Burning Palms is a free download, but if you like it please consider donating a small amount to help cover the mastering costs. To download it visit here: http://flamingpines.com/releases.htm  You can also make a donation on this page if you want to.

Praise for previous Flaming Pines releases:

Summer Floods – Kate Carr
“Carr’s work explores unconventional sounds, and challenges herself and
her listener to push outside their comfort zone. The vivid cinematic
quality it possesses creates a dramatic edge, intensely visual and
memorable.”      Future Sequence

Listen to the weather – Various Artists
“As a whole, the tracks on Listen to the Weather display a homogeneity of
structural approach, with most artists favouring an introductory drone,
a scattering of digital debris (the results of the weather data
sonification) followed by the interplay of melodic material drawn from
the mostly well-disguised song sample. However the manipulation of this
harmonic material offers many surprises and makes this album a
particularly pleasurable listening experience and an interesting
addition to the area of ecologically focused sound practice.”       RealTime Arts

Savaran track ‘Summerday’ – Free Download on Feedbackloop Label

With all the grim news in the world lately I felt like doing something bright and cheerful and the result was the track ‘Summerday’ for the Feedbackloop Label’s postcard series of releases. Head on over to http://feedbacklooplabel.tumblr.com/  where you can listen to the track, download it and also see the matching image and poem that Leonardo Rosado created for the track. The track is also available on Soundcloud here http://soundcloud.com/fblsoundcards/fpc009-summerday-by-savaran Lots of other great artists have contributed single tracks to this project and it would be well worth your time scrolling down the above webpages to listen to the other entries.

New Release! Savaran – Resonances EP

It’s release day for my new EP ‘Resonances’ over at the FeedbackLoop label here http://feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com/2011/05/fbl014-savaran-resonances.html Do make sure you grab the seperate PDF download too as this provides some detailed background info. on the inspiration behind each track. Hope you like the sounds and all feedback is most welcome. I will leave you with the excellent release notes/review by Michael Waring………

Welsh electroacoustic artist Mark Walters aka Savaran comes to Feedbackloop with a five track EP ‘Resonances’ after a number of netlabel releases over the past year. Utilising both digital and analogue instrumentation with field recordings, samples and an array of effects, Mark develops refined micro-soundscapes, tightly knit into granular textures which demand an attentive ear. In Resonances he marks waypoints in the contours of his own life, describing personal experiences – memories of events and locations – and his own interests in history, astronomy and geology.

Opener ‘The Forest’ is closely grounded in nature, a perpetually moving and shifting piece – being more and more ethereal. ‘Aurora’ cinematically depicts the sound of the lights in the sky created by particles passing through the atmosphere. A granular focus that is present also in the micro movements suggested in ‘Tectonic’. Constructed literally from the vibrations of earthquakes through a custom built digital effect, the track offers a kind of cathartis, made all the more relevant with the recent happenings in Japan. ‘Graaw’ is a childhood place remembered and revisted, illustrated with a careful eye, and representative of Mark’s unique observational style.

In last track ‘Delphic’ we’ve travelled as far from earthly groundings as we can, to otherworldly dimensions set within Greek mythology. Delphi was the seat of the oracle, housed in the temple of Apollo. Inspired by this historic reference – Mark translates these dramatic visuals into an exciting sonic experience.

Resonances is deeply personal, born from historic and personal interest which reveals itself to be emotionally evocative and intriguing for the listener. By allowing us this intimate insight
into these parts of himself, Mark achieves a brilliant expression of his own history, memory and self.

Savaran – Facebook Artist Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Savaran/119943491371699?v=wall

Savaran – Soundcloud http://soundcloud.com/savaran

Savaran Twitter – http://twitter.com/#!/Savaran_Music

Savaran – The Wintering Land CD/EP

My five track EP The Wintering Land was released on the 19th March by Somehow Recordings who are based in Stafford, UK. I’m very grateful to Tim and Nico for their support and genuine enthusiasm for my music, particulalry as it falls slightly outside the labels comfort zone of drone-based organic ambient sounds.  If you would like a copy of the CD do act fast as they are almost sold out with just two copies left !!

This EP is something of a concept piece and was developed over the winter months between November 2010 and January 2011. Last winter was particularly harsh across the UK and we recorded temperatures reaching -20 locally. This transformed the landscape totally over a far longer period than normal and new sights and sounds were everywhere. I recorded the changes photographically and with field recordings then decided to fuse these with a musical soundtrack following the transition from Autumn through deep winter and the passing of the ‘big freeze’.  For each track the original stimuli were audible or visual changes in the landscape close to our home here in Mid Wales, so the whole work is actually a very personal interpretation of these environmental influences in musical form.

I hope you enjoy the music and do feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss anything related to the release….  Mark

Savaran – The Wintering Land CD/EP. http://www.somehowrecordings.co.uk/shop.html

Ember Music Compilation Volume 1 – Out Now

The Ember Music Compilation Volume 1 has been released today on Bandcamp http://embermusic.bandcamp.com/album/ember-music-volume-1 The album includes wholly electronic music covering many genres from ambient to experimental and all stations in between and showcases the recent work of twelve artists on the label including me.

Ember Music was started in June 2010 as a purely artist-run label that would allow and encourage artists to take control of their own development and creations while providing an environment for them to collaborate and learn from one another.

In the labels first 6 months of existence it has gathered together artists from all over the world (USA, UK, Spain, Turkey, Canada, Iceland). It represents where Ember music is at this point in time, showing both the common threads and the unique aspects of each of the  artists and shows the potential of where Ember Music goes from here.

Ember Music Compilation Volume 1. Ember Music. Released 01 January 2011. Mastered by William Bendrot

Savaran – Snowfall (for Listen to the Weather project)

Just finished  a track for the Listen to the Weather project curated by the sound artist Kate Carr for the Ear to the Earth Festival http://www.listentotheweather.com/navigation.htm 

You can listen to other artists tracks contributed to the project here http://soundcloud.com/listentotheweather

The track Snowfall is based around a field recording of wet snow hitting bracken fronds during a walk along the Montgomeryshire Canal near where I live. The recording was taken from below the leaves so that you get a nice delicate, slushy, pattering sound. I then added some layers of sound created with the Korg Monotron and Zebra 2.5 synthesizers and mixed them live with Live 8 and the APC40 controller.

Savaran – Microcosmos EP now out on the Gradient Audio Label

Hi! I’m pleased to announce that the Microcosmos EP is now available on the Gradient Audio Label. These tracks were originally aired on my Soundcloud pages as demos some months back and Jason Foster at Gradient Audio kindly offered to do an EP with fully mastered versions of the tracks on his new dubstep/downtempo/ambient label. The tracks were mastered by Ben Jura at GCR Audio and I think they sound really warm, full and detailed compared to my lowly mastering efforts on the original demos.

If you like your ambient on the slightly darker side with lots of shifting textures and atmosphere then you will probably like these tracks.  Currently you can get the EP downloads here at Digital Tunes http://www.digital-tunes.net/search?search=gradient+audio or http://www.digital-tunes.net/releases/microcosmos_ep  The EP will also be on Addictech soon http://bit.ly/ht8HEr and further releases will appear on iTunes, Amazon and Juno by the end of the month.

Your feedback on the EP would be most welcome and I hope you enjoy the music

Something spooky for Halloween – New track ‘On Hallows Eve’

Work has been hectic lately so it has been great to unwind with some music this weekend.  I’ve been busy recording tracks for the Feedbackloop label EP out next year and I just completed a track called ‘Views from a Slow Train’ for an Ember Music compilation which was inspired by my wife’s love of old steam trains and  train travel in general.  I also recently completed the dark-ambient industrial track ‘Deconstruction’ for the Feebackloop Label compilation project called Brave New World.

So with Halloween approaching, the dark nights creeping in and the slow decay of Autumn well under way I thought I would put together a dark ambient track with some spooky flavour. The photo above shows detail on a gravestone and was taken in Whithorn Priory churchyard in Scotland. Hope you like this dark little soundscape……

Signed a four track EP deal with Gradient Audio

Just signed up for a four track EP deal with Gradient Audio http://gradientaudio.com/ after some changes to the contract were agreed. The EP will be called Microcosmos and should appear on CD and as a download early next year. The label is a relatively new startup (the website is fairly devoid of content at the moment) and mostly has D&B artists signed so far, so it will be interesting to see how my soundscaped ambient stuff fits in with their future vision for the label.

Future Sequence interview with Savaran is online

Just completed a lengthy interview for the Future Sequence online electronic music magazine which you can read here http://www.futuresequence.com/article/interview-savaran/  The interview looks at my setup and creative process with questions posed by Adam Williams who is the artist Model Citizen http://modelci…tizen.bandcamp.com/ It was great fun to do and should give you a much better insight into my music and background than has previously been available. My thanks to Adam and Future Sequence for this opportunity.